Venturefest South Innovator: Vimsy

Simply put, Vimsy takes videos, organises them and removes the distractions, for businesses across the world. But they also do much more than that. Ahead of their involvement at Venturefest South, we caught up with the team to hear all about their company...

Describe your business in no more than 100 words

Vimsy is an online service for creating your own business TV channel. You can organise your videos, you can control who can see them, and you can decide whether or not people have to pay to access them, giving you some extra income. Vimsy takes your videos from Youtube, Vimeo and other sources, and gives them the home they deserve to help you get the most from your video library.

What prompted you to enter the Innovation Zone? Describe the innovation that you’ve entered with.

Video is an excellent tool for delivering effective messages at scale. The problem we’ve found is that when a company invests in having, say, a training film or a series of training films produced, there were very few off-the-shelf solutions for distributing those videos in a controlled and corporate manner to the people who need to watch them.

By using Vimsy, we can help forward thinking businesses and organisations use video effectively to communicate, share ideas and deliver training in a way that doesn’t send the viewer down a rabbit hole of distractions like other video platforms do.

This is why we built Vimsy and why we want to show it off at Venturefest South. Vimsy will be used by Venturefest South to showcase the videos being produced on the day by the team at Southpoint Films so that delegates and investors can re-watch the keynotes and pitches at their own leisure, at a later date.

How would you describe that to a novice?

We take videos, organise them and remove all of the distractions.

From a business perspective, we can show our clients which videos have been watched, who’s watched them and even which parts have been watched for monitoring compliance, which is essential for training films.

Videos can also be sold through Vimsy too, allowing businesses to create their own video on-demand or subscription services, which is similar in approach to what the folks in Hollywood are doing except within reach of small businesses and independent content creators.

What are the biggest challenges you face?

Other than simply getting our product out there and in front of people who are ready to use it, the hardest part is getting businesses to think creatively about embracing video.

There are so many areas of a business where the use of video can make dramatic improvements, such as staff and customer training. Small businesses in particular don’t have the resources or funds to run regular training sessions, so they generally don’t happen.

Instead, these businesses could use video to record their training and deliver it through Vimsy, where they can check to see if their staff and customers have been watching the videos - and how much of the video has been watched too. For that initial cost of creating the videos - whether it’s buying a camera, commissioning a video production company, or putting the man-hours into creating the training materials to begin with - the problem of getting all of your staff and/or customers on the same page is practically solved.

What are your biggest professional achievements to date?

The thing I am most proud of when it comes to my businesses is the way that we use video to creatively solve problems. I studied film and TV from my GCSEs at secondary school up until I left university in 2013 and there was very little emphasis placed during that time on using video and digital media for anything other than making movies and TV shows (for entertainment).

Through my businesses, Southpoint Films and Vimsy, I’ve seen our videos used to share knowledge across borders that were too risky to send a member of staff over. This was for a project that involved teaching police officers in the Middle East how to do basic tasks, like first aid, so that they could literally save lives and protect civilians in their communities.

Not all of our projects are quite that 'life and death', but the principle is that many of the videos we make and distribute are being used for improving the world in some way, even if it’s often just small ways, like making sure the cleaner knows how to use the machine that keeps your local supermarket hygienic.

How do you feel about showcasing to potentially hundreds of people at Venturefest South?

Excited!

What are you hoping to get out of attending Venturefest South?

I’m hoping to meet people who are passionate about innovation and, most importantly, I’m hoping that Venturefest South makes people aware that there are very exciting and forward-thinking ideas coming out of the local area, not just in big cities like London.

Where do you see your company in five years time?

I want it to be as many times successful as it is now from where it was five years ago. Considering that my businesses didn’t exist five years ago, I’ll let you work the maths out on that one for me.

What advice would you give to aspiring innovators?

Where do I start? Be prepared to work hard for your business. Don’t give up when you hit a minor speed bump, but equally be realistic if things aren’t going your way. Listen to what your customers tell you and change your business if things aren’t working the way you want them to. Don’t compare yourself to others as the path they’ve taken could be vastly different from yours. Find yourself a good business mentor. The list could go on.

Vimsy will be part of the Innovation Zone at the inaugural Venturefest South event taking place at Winchester Guildhall on 9th March – for more information and to book your tickets, visit https://venturefestsouth.co.uk/